Schools rethink plans for next year’s budget

Anne Williams

Thursday

May 27, 2010 at 12:01 AM

Just as they were putting the finishing touches on next year’s spending plans, school budget planners across Lane County and the rest of the state found themselves scrambling Wednesday to assess the potential impact of Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s bombshell budget-shortfall announcement.

If the governor’s figures are correct, it could mean more than $4 million in spending reductions for the Springfield School District next year, said Brett Yancey, business operations director.

“It surprised a lot of people,” Yancey said. “It’s surprising that the numbers were this bad.”

Kulongoski said Tuesday he would ask state agencies — including the Department of Education — to draw up plans to absorb a 9 percent reduction to help plug a projected $563 million budget shortfall.

Though official estimates of schools’ proportional shares haven’t yet come out, Springfield and other districts have done some early number-crunching. The Eugene School District pegs its share at $6.6 million; in the Bethel district, it’s $2.4 million.

Springfield’s budget committee already signed off on a draft budget last week; the school board was scheduled to hold a public hearing and vote to finalize it on June 14. Yancey said that now may be pushed back to June 28, two days before state law requires districts to approve their budgets.

Springfield’s spending plan includes an $89.4 million general operating fund — enough to restore school days that were eliminated in the current year, purchase math textbooks, offer new online courses to students and even squirrel away about $1.4 million for a reserve fund to cushion the blow of anticipated rate hikes in the Public Employees Retirement System.

Yancey said Tuesday’s revelations could derail some of that.

“I think at this point everything is back on the table,” he said.

The Springfield district also recently ratified one-year agreements with all three of its employee groups. The pacts preserve jobs and essentially restore compensation to the levels it would have been at in the current year had employees not given concessions totaling $3.56 million in promised pay, benefits and training opportunities. A large part of those savings came from lopping five days off the school calendar.

Yancey said any cuts to compensation — whether they come in the form of fewer school days, reduced cost-of-living increases or other forms — would require bargaining to reopen those sections of the contracts.

Susan Fahey, the Eugene district’s chief financial officer, said Tuesday’s news has prompted the district to try to reconvene its budget committee, which approved a draft budget on May 10. If enough members can attend, the committee will meet Wednesday at 6 p.m., prior to a school board meeting.

Staff members will present a menu of options for trimming another $6.6 million in spending from the budget, on top of the $8.4 million already cut. Those earlier reductions, made worse by declining enrollment and the subsequent loss of per-pupil funds, include about 26 teaching positions, a $1.2 million hit to central administration and tapping more than $5 million from reserves and delayed transfers to other funds.

Faced with such a potentially large deficit at this late date, Fahey said it’s likely to come down to cutting either positions or school days, or both.

“I’ve been worried for a while that our forecast appeared to be too rosy when you looked at what other states were forecasting and their cut levels,” she said, “but I wasn’t expecting the dramatic level (announced Tuesday).”

Districts could see some relief from federal legislation authorizing as much as $470 million to Oregon to support medical needs and education. But given the gigantic deficit predicted for 2011-12 — anywhere from $11 million to $32 million for the Eugene district, officials estimate — Fahey said she’d be hard-pressed to recommend using any additional federal funds for the 2010-11 school year.

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